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Russian prosecutors requested a 3½ year prison sentence Friday for a blogger charged with inciting religious hatred for playing "Pokemon Go" in a church.
Prosecutors made the request as the trial of Ruslan Sokolovsky, 22, wrapped up in the city of Yekaterinburg. A judge said a verdict in the case would be issued May 11.
Sokolovsky posted a video on his blog showing him playing the smartphone game in a church built on the supposed spot where the last Russian tsar and his family were killed. He has been in detention since October.
He is charged with inciting religious hatred. It is the same offense that sent two women from the Pussy Riot punk collective to prison for two years in 2012.
Source: ABC News
Video: YouTube
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Russian Prosecutors Seek 3.5 Years for Blogger Who Played "Pokémon Go" in Church
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Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school
make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 01 2017, @01:36AM
Anyone think it's coincidence that this controversy is over a church that is a shrine to the death of Nicholas II and his family? Once known as "Nicholas the Bloody" and subject to negative Communist propaganda for generations, the last Tsar's legacy has been rehabilitated significantly during Putin's reign. Shrines to the murdered Romanovs have appeared all over Russia. There have even been rumors than Putin plans to reinstate the Romanov dynasty in some way, to connect his legacy to the centuries-old Russian empire.
So it's not that this guy did this in a "church"; his act may have been taken as defiling a sort of national religious and political monument. I don't see English language news stories commenting on this, but I must imagine the specific church in question is significant to the draconian prosecution.